AWE is an interesting project, where your office wall is a helpful robot. That’s the goal anyway. The wall is articulated and can reconfigure its shape to fit your needs. You can see in their video that they have come up with several specific uses for AWE at different positions. We want to like AWE, we see that there is potential there. The video hasn’t won us over, there just wasn’t enough added benefit over a simple setup like a projector mount. We think the real benefit just isn’t as obvious. When we saw the girl stand up, and the wall back away intuitively, our attention was regained. What potential uses do you guys see?
Group riding can be a bit dangerous if the pace is fast and riders don’t notice a slowing in the front of the pack. [WyoJustin] designed a brake light system for cyclists to try and remedy this issue. LEDs are mounted in the end caps of the handlebars on a road bike. When an accelerometer senses the bike slowing down the LEDs light up, warning those behind you that you’re slowing down.
The system is made to be portable, as a lot of serious riders have multiple bikes. To make this happen, all of the electronics are housed in the handlebar tubing for easy transfer. This includes an accelerometer with built in voltage regulator, an Arduino to control everything, and a battery. Take a look at the brake lights in action after the break.
Most of the bike lights we see are for the front of the machine, but this backward-facing package is a clean and easy solution we can get behind (safely).
[Hailrazer] built a handheld GameCube so he could take his gaming with him. The final product is quite nice, providing a large display and about 3 hours of play time on the lithium polymer batteries.
Starting with the case from a Kidz Delight Datamax game, he used Bondo ABS cement and plastic bumper filler to alter the case but still provide a professional look. The display is a five-inch PlayStation One LCD Screen from which he also incorporated the speakers. At least four controllers were cannibalized for use as the buttons, sticks, triggers, and directional pad. Our favorite feature is the totally exposed optical head mounted on the back.
We’ve embedded video as well as a picture of the optical drive after the break. This goes so far beyond just making the GameCube an all-in-one system. If you like this build, check out the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast mods on [Hailrazer's] YouTube channel.
Our friend [Garrett Mace] from macetech has finished a prototype of a new shield which allows the Arduino (or any other microcontroller with I2C) to add 64 digital I/O pins using only 2 of the analog pins. Currently he only has a few pre-production boards, and rather than selling them he is throwing a contest to win them. The contest is looking for people who have a specific project in mind that could use the centipede, and on Friday November 13th he will pick his favorite two. To submit an idea, just head over the Arduino forums and post an idea complete with details and relevant schematics, etc.
We will be sure to follow up with the winners of the contest, as well as let you all know when the Centipede Shield makes it into production.
Maybe we’re just imagining things, but it seems to us like brainwave control is the latest trend in toys. Similar to Uncle Milton’s Force Trainer, Mattel has recently released the MindFlex, a game that involves moving a plastic ball up and down through an obstacle course that you control using your brainwaves. Naturally when [Alpha] saw this, he decided to take it apart and document what he found. After disassembling both the headset and the base, he found that most of the chips were covered in black resin making them unidentifiable. However, he was able to find identify one chip, the NeuroSky TGAT1-L64 D498Q-010 0924. Judging by the name alone, we would guess that this is the chip that makes the brainwave control possible. While there’s no mention as to whether you’ll be able to interface with this like you can with the Force Trainer, we’re sure that it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out how to use this to control more than just a floating plastic ball.
What do gangs, territories, cities, and glowing blue balls have in common? No, not that one drunken night you can’t seem to remember, rather a new location aware game called Urban Defender.
The concept behind the game is simple. A player hold a ball that knows its current location and can notify you if needed via LEDs and a speaker of changes in its environment. He or she then runs around the city until the ball tells them of an unclaimed or enemy territory. Bounce the ball against a building and that territory is now claimed.
The ball itself is a prototype combination of an Arduino, Accelerometer, vibration motor, LEDs, XBee, batteries, and wire all packed inside of an industrial rubber gym ball. Unfortunately after testing the Urban Defender team found the GPS and a few other components would need to be kept outside of the ball and on the player.
Finally, a project that warrants the use of an Arduino. Anyone up for a game?
[Keith Baxter] has undertaken something of a ‘Mount Everest’ of guitar modifications. He’s developing a Servoelectric guitar that trades frets for a keypad. It is still a guitar in the sense that it has a body, strings, and pickups to sense the strings vibrations and pass them to an amplifier. The left hand, which traditionally would shorten the strings as needed by pressing them against a fret, now changes string pitch using a keypad. This is an interesting fusion between traditional guitar and 80’s phenomenon, the keytar.
Each string is connected to a different servo motor. When a key on the keypad is pressed, the corresponding servo adjusts the tension of that string, bringing it in tune at the new pitch. His original design involved a lot of custom circuitry but he’s evolved the project to include an Arduino controller. This second generation both simplifies the control circuitry and improves upon it.
We’ve embedded some video after the break. In the first example you can see the strings adjusting for each new pitch. In the second, take a look behind the guitarist… what do you think he’s got planned for those giant capacitors?
One day computers will exist in every part of our lives. You’ll be standing in the shower, lathering up when Chantal, your holographic computer controlled AI partner, informs you in a cool voice you have a new email. How splendid, it must be the office letting you know there is no work today! “Anything else?” You ask; “Negative” her electronically synthesized voice responds.
Over at TINYenormous they’ve made this dream come true – minus the holographic computer controlled AI partner bit. Rather its simply a physical email notification system consisting of an LED and Arduino with some python code. We like the concept but prefer our Google Desktop with Gmail setup instead. Perhaps by using a small wireless server and rechargeable batteries, it could make a great dinner table centerpiece notifying you of the latest email. How simple, or how complicated would you make a setup?
[Andrew] built a light box for an exhibition last year that displayed different colors statically. After showing it off, it went unchanged but future improvements remained in the back of his mind. Recently, he pulled it out again and hacked together a controller to drive the colors individually.
He’s actually reusing some of the hardware he built for a different project. At its core is a PIC 16F628 that actuates the lights using relays. In this case, only four of the eight on the board are used to control red, white, blue, and green cold cathode tubes. The video after the break shows the device randomly rotating through different patterns. This is a nice start to making the piece more interactive and we can image adding web-controlled color changes, or perhaps some Daft Punk inspired functionality.
The physical build of this project is nothing short of beautiful. He’s mounted several curved control boards to the outside of the instrument. The controls feature six push buttons, five toggle switches, and six potentiometers that interface with an Arduino. The sound is picked up by the device then sent along with the switch settings to a computer via Bluetooth. The computer then works its magic to create the wicked audio effects heard in the video after the break.
His article, linked above, includes several diagrams detailing the synthesis process. They’re a little beyond our understanding but if you know what’s going on, please share your insight in the comments.
